


Chief Engineer’s Log

by mithrel



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Character Study, Gen, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-28
Updated: 2009-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:05:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was unbelievable, he thought ecstatically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chief Engineer’s Log

It was unbelievable, he thought ecstatically. One minute he was marooned on a godforsaken hunk of rock, and the next he was on the _Enterprise_.

As a kid he’d been fascinated with how things worked. When he was five, he’d taken the comm unit apart to see where the voices came from, and his mother had screamed at him for an hour. Later he learned how to put things back together after taking them apart, but his parents and brother still got exasperated when they wanted to use something and found it strewn in pieces on the floor.

He’d known almost from the beginning that he wanted to be an engineer, so he took all the math and science courses he could in school, then enlisted in Starfleet Academy. He’d got top grades, and when one of his instructors told him he could stay on after graduation for an independent research project, he’d been thrilled.

He was convinced transwarp beaming was possible, and worked on it for six years before the Incident. The next thing he knew his commission had been deactivated, and he’d been “semi-retired” to Delta Vega.

 _Retired, my arse_ , he thought. It was an exile, plain and simple. He’d gone more than a bit mad, with no one to talk to. Oh, Keenser was all right–he supposed he was fond of the little fellow, despite the fact that they bickered constantly, but he wasn’t much for conversation. He missed having human company.

Then that old Vulcan had shown up, bringing with him a human about four years younger than him; he’d assumed they were there to pick him up, and had gone off on a long rant about how annoyed he was, and how he’d got there.

Turns out they were madder than he was; they thought they were from the future (well, at least the Vulcan claimed to be) and that he, Montgomerey Scott, had developed the equation for transwarp beaming. He might, someday, provided he got off this rock, but he certainly hadn’t yet, and he didn’t believe a word of it.

But then he’d seen the equation, which looked like it might actually work, and which incidentally would save him a lot of work when he did develop it, provided he could remember the details. By then he’d found out that the man Kirk was from the _Enterprise_ , and had tried not to drool at the thought of that ship.

Then it turned out that he was going to go with Kirk, and he was hard-pressed to keep from dancing with glee. Not only would he _finally_ be leaving Delta Vega, he’d be traveling on the finest ship in the fleet.

Of course, that was provided the equation actually worked, and the Vulcan didn’t beam them into open space or the center of a solid body, or scatter their molecules across the system.

He was sad to say goodbye to Keenser, but the thought of the _Enterprise_ comforted him. When he actually got _on_ the ship, he didn’t care that he was half drowned, nearly shredded, and manhandled by a security team.

There was some sort of altercation between Kirk and a younger Vulcan, which was interesting, and then they were headed for Earth.

He’d been briefed in what was going on, and he still wasn’t sure he believed it. _Something_ had certainly happened to Vulcan, but that might have been a natural disaster, or a meteorite, and have nothing to do with time-travel. But Kirk needed an engineer. So he went to work.

He beamed Kirk and Spock (and was he the same Vulcan he’d met before? He tried not to think about that) onto the _Narada_ , and then managed to beam both of them out, from two different places, as well as the actual captain of the ship. No one paid any attention to this feat, but he was used to tooting his own horn.

By the end of it all, the _Enterprise_ had been nearly torn apart by a singularity, and was bereft of her warp engines. Scotty winced, thinking about the damage. _Ah, well, occupational hazard. Hopefully it doesn’t happen too often._

There was a reception when they got back; a heroes’ welcome. Kirk got promoted. Scotty didn’t really care about all the taradiddle, except insofar as it meant his commission was reactivated.

Kirk must have requested him on the _Enterprise_ , because he abruptly found himself chief engineer. He was elated at this development; the _Enterprise_ was the finest ship in the 'Fleet, and her crew seemed all right. He didn’t really know any of them except Kirk, although McCoy had asked him for a drink when they’d got back to San Francisco and he’d accepted readily. That was another luxury Delta Vega had lacked: alcohol.

Yes, on the whole, he was completely satisfied with his life.

If only that damn dog would turn up.


End file.
